180 THE LONELY NIETZSCHE
one's instincts better, even the instincts of opposition. But the Schopenhauerian 'pity* has always worked the arch-mischief in my life—and accordingly I have every reason to look with favour on those moral systems which recognise a few other impulses to morality and do not try to reduce all our human virtues to ' sympathies.' Such a view not only betrays a softness which would have moved any high-minded Hellene to laughter, but involves a serious practical danger. Our ideal of humanity must be followed consistently; with this ideal we must coerce and subjugate our fellow-men as well as ourselves, and thus have a creative influence. This cannot be done unless we keep our feelings of pity well under control, and treat as enemies all who go contrary to our ideal (as for instance, such scum as L. and R.).—This is how I preach morality to myself, you see; but to attain this * wisdom' almost cost me my life.
" I ought to have spent the summer with you and in the noble company of friends that surrounds you : but now it is too late!
"Yours in all gratitude and devotion,
"NIETZSCHE."
His relations with Fraulein Lou Salom<S were closed for ever by a letter to the young lady's mother in August, 1883. He tells Frau Salom^, as he had told Georg lUe (p. 174), of his disappointment with Lou and his vain attempts to see her as she had been described to him, and concludes : " Both my sister and I have every reason to put a black mark in the calendar against the clay when we met your daughter. (That we both had the best intentions towards her is beyond all doubt/*
In order to divert my brother's thoughts into other channels, I spoke to him of an old plan, which he himself had often mooted, of once more delivering lectures at a University. The subject?I suggested was Greek culture, but what I really meant was his new philosophy, as he himself had already mentioned in a letter: " Lectures on the Text of Zarathustra" I still regret that this idea was never realised. At the time, unfortunately, we only thought of lectures in connection with a University.